Quote:
Originally Posted by Billi
Could or would you enjoy these books that create the greatest criticism here - bad spelling, grammar... - when you would listen to them as audio books?
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Certain books are actually
written aloud. An extreme example is Lautremont declaiming the text of
Maldoror triumphantly while striking loud chords on a piano. (Small wonder the text includes a scene in which the author rejects a woman's attentions in favor of a shark's.)
Ungrammatical language, as thought and uttered by characters, is often captured realistically by the writer, like the blemishes and pores on a person's face in a superrealist painting. (
Huck Finn is a famous example.)
When the writer is accomplished, their use of that apparently butchered language feels as stylized yet precise as the sweep of a painter's brush.
Manet could render the sparkle of an ale-aglow glass with strokes that seemed loose and spontaneous, yet we know from others' accounts that the effect was sometimes accomplished over days and weeks.
Find a high-resolution image of one of his boozier paintings and look at it closely; scrutinize the alchemy by which he conjures tavern vernacular. The same can be true of writers with a colloquial gift.
Careless writers are another matter and so is their sound. Whether the text is on the page or read aloud, you can hear them stumbling in the halls of syntax and breaking entire shelves of porcelain. All of that can throw off any reader with an ear for grace.